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This session maps how protective strategies in foster youth evolve across development — from the transparent concealment of latency to the sophisticated relational management of adolescence — while their underlying protective function remains constant. Drawing on developmental deception research and The U-Model™, it reframes the “testing” behavior so familiar in foster care (canceled sessions, provocations, withheld information) as a protector's attachment question: will this clinician stay? Clinicians serving foster youth learn to read a young person's developmental stage through their protective strategy and to match a Self-led, developmentally attuned response that lowers the protector's workload

This course is eligible for 2 continuing education credits.

This course is suitable for Psychologists, LMHCs, MFTs, Social Workers, LPCs, and Counselors.

Advanced

5:45–6:00pm Opening & Orientation, Welcome; orient to the session’s core reframe and learning objectives
6:00–6:30pm Part One — Core Concepts; Didactic presentation with clinical examples
6:30–6:35pm Break
6:35–7:20pm Part Two — Teaching Vignettes; Case vignettes with foster youth; guided discussion
7:20–7:45pm Part Three & Close; Skills practice, Monday-morning application, recap, between-session assignment, Q&A, and post-test

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

1. Identify 1-2 protective strategies at each developmental stage—latency, pre-adolescence, and adolescence—and explain how its form changes while its function remains the same.

2. Identify one developmentally attuned, Self-led response matched to a foster youth's protective strategy at their current stage.